by C. L. Stone
“We should find a payphone around here somewhere,” Blake said checking behind us as we walked.
I kept my head down, my hands in my pockets. My feet were still bare and the ground was cold. “Maybe I could find some shoes on the way.”
“Keep an eye out,” he said. “Cars we pass by parked by the side of the road might have some in them. Unless you’d be upset if we took stole them. Is that too much?”
I blew out a frustrated breath.
“Honey, I’m not trying to be flippant. But there’s not a shop along this road. And besides, first thing they took was my wallet. And also my house is blown up now.” He pulled out his pockets until the material showed. “I’m a broke man. But I don’t want to cause a rift with you mad at me for stealing.”
I paused in my walking and considered what he said. “You know, when I first met you, I was intimidated because you had money. I thought you’d be some snob.”
“You don’t think I’m a snob now?”
“No.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Maybe it was learning about your obsession with Pop Tarts. Made you human.”
“I’d give anything for one right now.” He held a palm over his stomach. “Believe it or not, the money is new. I earned it.”
“How?”
He kept his hand at his stomach, his hand tightening at the material, bundling it in his fingers. “Probably not in the best ways. Helping people, like when you met me, only I took money for my services.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“The only people who need help in exchange for money, at least in that sort of thing, were unscrupulous folks. People who usually got too far into the bad side of things and couldn’t get out. Good people usually don’t have that sort of trouble. Not that often anyway.”
I bit my lower lip and turned from him, walking away. “Guess you’re right. Honest, good people…they don’t end up like this.”
He approached me from behind, grabbing my wrist. “Kayli,” he said but paused.
I froze, shoulders hunched, looking at the ground. “I tried to be. Corey tried to be. They all did. They changed, tried to be good people…”
The hand at my wrist tugged me until I turned and he put his arms around me. He held me until resistance faded and I had my forehead in the crook of his neck. “I’m just tired,” I said.
“Don’t apologize or excuse it. Because there’s nothing to apologize for. Maybe you were good. Maybe they were, too. But when you’re dealing with bad people, people who are able to legally walk the streets, evading police, sometimes it takes some questionable choices to take them down. It’s why the police have to pretend to be bad guys on occasion. Trap the bad people doing the bad things.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. “We’re not the cops.”
“Did you want to be one?” he asked. He pulled back so he could look at me. “We’re something else. Or maybe when this is over, we’ll do something completely different.”
“Is it ever going to be over?”
“Has to be,” he said. “Soon. For us.” His hands massaged my shoulders. “I’d like to check in at that hospital if we have time,” he said. “Where they sent Natalie.”
“She okay?”
“Her and my brother got…it wasn’t good. She wasn’t doing so well when Alice was still trying to get information out of us. These guys let her go to the hospital, after disorienting them, before we figured out we were still in the same damn building. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
I nodded. “If she’s at the same hospital I was at, they’ll take care of her. They know what to look for.”
His hands moved to cup my cheeks. “We just need to get everyone else out. It’ll be over soon. I promise.”
And then what? I had to wonder. This had gone on for so long. I couldn’t imagine going back to normal.
We moved on, and when we couldn’t find a phonebooth, we darted into a bar and asked to use the phone.
“Local call?” the guy at the bar said. It was dim except for lights behind us over the tables and a few coming up from underneath the bar, making the bartenders look haunted.
Blake nodded. “Just for a cab buddy of mine. Left my phone in his car when he dropped us off.”
The guy motioned us to follow him into a back office. The space smelled like leather and mold, with a single desk in the middle and a wide screen TV facing it in the tiny space. A phone was on the desk, underneath a pile of paperwork.
I used it to dial out for Avery while Blake distracted our bartender host.
Avery picked up on the second ring. “I got you, but I don’t drive anymore. I can redirect you to…”
“Avery,” I said quickly. “It’s me.”
He sputtered as he lost track of his spiel. “Kayli? Where are you?”
“I’m downtown,” I told him the bar. “Are you busy? Can you come get us?”
He was silent for a minute then came back. “Sure,” he said. “What’s going on? I haven’t heard anything except there might have been a small fire…the police were here looking for you…well, Raven, but you…”
“Long story,” I said. “Come pick me up and I’ll explain it.”
♠♠♠♠♠♠
It took a while, but Avery finally showed up in his old clunker tank.
“Got it back?” I asked as I slid into the back seat. Blake got in the front passenger side.
Avery smoothed his hand over the dashboard. “I just don’t really like new cars, apparently. They don’t drive right.” He pulled away from the curb and then turned to get us away from the tourist section of town. “What’s going on?”
“You said someone was close to figuring out where old Mr. Murdock was?”
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a forensics team working on a trail to locate him. Apparently, they need him.”
“Because they can’t access the missing money without him?” I asked.
He used the rearview mirror to look back at me, wiping some of the longer locks of his hair out of his face. “How’d you know? Did I tell you?”
“No,” I said.
“We’ve got trouble,” Blake said. “Alice took people from our team.”
Avery frowned. “Who? Which ones?”
“A bunch of them. But it’s okay, for now. We’ve got people who overtook her group.”
Avery’s eyes widened. “So she’s gone?”
“Not really, no,” Blake said. “It’s complicated.”
“What’s the last lead you had on Mr. Murdock? Where is he?”
“Like I said, a forensics team is on to him,” he said. He shifted so he could pull a cell phone out of his back pocket. He checked the screen for messages. “I can take you to Ethan. He’ll know more than me.”
“We can’t,” I said. “The cops are looking for me.”
“Right,” Avery said, lowering the phone to watch where he was driving. He side-glanced to Blake. “So now what?”
“We could call him,” Blake said. “Might be risky…”
“Let me try,” Avery said. He picked up his phone, putting it to his ear. I could hear the phone dial out, the buzzing as he waited for someone to pick up, and then a voice. “Connect me to Ethan, please? Thank you.” Pause. “Hi,” he said. “No, everything’s okay. Listen, I know we’re looking for your father, but what’s the latest on that. I was just thinking of something. Kayli…you know that girl…Yeah.” He slowed the car until he was stopped off the side of the road. With the late hour, there wasn’t much traffic on this road. He focused on his conversation.
I watched behind us and ahead of us. Having been in an accident, I wasn’t sure I could feel comfortable in a car for a while. Especially at night like it was now.
Avery snapped at Blake and made a writing motion. Blake checked the dash and the glove compartment, finding a pen, but no paper. Avery grabbed the pen, and then Blake’s arm, and wrote something down. “Really? A boat? I always said the best way to esca
pe detection was a boat. Right, having a hard time finding it…”
Blake shared a knowing look with me while Avery wrote things down. “I don’t have one left. And it’s just the three of us. Old Mr. Murdock isn’t going to be doing this alone. Everyone we know is tied up.”
“Didn’t Doyle leave on a boat?” I asked.
Blake pursed his lips, sitting back in the seat while keeping his arm out for Avery. “He’ll hate me calling him back in.”
Avery hung up, motioning to the stuff he wrote on Blake’s arm. The scribble was hard to read. Avery squinted at it. “That’s the supposed make and model of the ship. They don’t think it’s left the vicinity.”
Blake pointed to a spot on his arm. “Does that say trawler?”
“Yeah.”’
He nodded. “The make’s old. Probably isn’t going fast or far. How do they know this is where he is?”
Avery shrugged. “I don’t know. The team’s probably captured everything else or something?” He looked around as someone drove up behind us, slowing, no doubt wondering why the car was pulled to the side of the road. They passed us and sped up. “Where can I take you? To the marina? Do we start there?”
“We should let you go,” I said. “But can you take us to John’s Island? I’ve got a vehicle there we can use.”
TOGETHER, TO GET HER
It must have been very late when we pulled into the grocery store lot. Parking was nearly empty. The line of RVs still remained parked in the back lot for the night.
The one Axel and I borrowed was still there.
“Sure you don’t need anything?” Avery asked.
“No,” I said. I’d gotten out and hovered over his window to say goodbye. “Get back to Ethan. Make sure he’s safe.”
He nodded and started to roll up his window but then stopped. “You know, I can do more than just drive.”
I smirked at him. “Yeah. I know. You’re smart. I think that’s why Ethan saw something good in you and hired you.”
He beamed. “You think so?”
“And I know you’d do your best to protect him. You’re good at your job.”
He bobbed his head a few times. “I like this job.”
I watched as he pulled away and then as he got onto the road and drove off.
Blake stood beside me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “He’s a good guy.”
I felt guilty getting Avery wrapped up in all this, too. It felt like everyone around me was involved, in trouble, hoping for a miracle day when this would all be over.
Behind us, there was a tap of metal slamming up against metal.
We turned, finding the door to the RV Axel had borrowed to be open. A woman came out, blond hair, unfamiliar to me. There was something off in the way she looked, like she was sad. It reminded me a lot of Brandon. She was older, mid-thirties maybe. It was hard to be sure in the dark.
She wasn’t alone. Another man was behind her. His face was shadowed.
Blake and I backed away, ready to head for the grocery store. We weren’t about to get caught again.
“Wait,” she called out. “I’m here for my husband,” she said. “Liam. Where is he?”
I shared a long look with Blake and then turned. “You’re…”
She approached me, her hands open, showing me they were empty. Her green eyes widened. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but we haven’t heard from him in—”
Blake stepped in front of me, cautiously. “Lillian?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “You know me?”
“Your husband talked about you,” he said. He looked over her shoulder to the other man. “And that you had more than one…”
Her cheeks flushed, but she turned to look at the guy with her. “That’s got to be Blake Coaltar.” She turned back to him. “We can trust you?”
“You might not want to,” he said. “But we’re what’s left. Alice got to us.”
She came closer in a hurry, her face contorted into worry. “Where is she?”
“Tied up,” I said. “Also captured.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
I motioned to the RV. “It’s a long story, but can you trust us that what we’re doing, it’s to help?”
She pressed her lips together. “Maybe if you’ll tell me about it. We’ll make a decision together.”
♠♠♠♠♠♠
We loaded into the RV, with Blake and I sitting in the driver and passenger seat while Lillian and her other husband, Henry, got into the booth behind us. I did my best to explain things while Blake drove the RV and headed on out to Folly Beach.
“If they’re at the Sargent Jasper,” Lillian said after I thought I covered everything, “why are we heading the opposite way?”
“There’s a lot of them,” I said. “And more on the way. And what they want is old Mr. Murdock, who might be on a houseboat somewhere.”
“Last coordinates were off of Folly Beach, river side,” Blake said.
“You’re going to give him to them?” she asked. “So they can get the money out of him?”
“I don’t know what we’ll do with him,” I said. “We should pass him over to the cartel to negotiate. They said they’d let the others go…”
“Maybe after they’ve been let go, we can have that forensics team chase them,” Blake said.
“But first, we have to get our people out safely.” I motioned to Blake’s arm filled with writing. “They had a small team looking for someone who might know, but we don’t have time before the rest of the cartel shows up, people who might harm everyone they’ve got. We got lucky the local people are more hesitant to risk murder for this deal.”
Lillian made fists with her hands, looking at her husband and back at me. “Then we need information. Who all do they have? If you want to negotiate, we need a list.”
I rattled off everyone I knew. “Marc, Corey, Brandon…Axel’s with a team trying to find Murdock but still against his will. There’s my father…Jack. My brother Wil. Cornelius. Alice I think is tied up too, and whoever…”
“Wait,” Lillian said. “Did you say Cornelius? Cornelius Buble?”
She was Academy. So she must be familiar with their team members. “Yeah. He was tied up with me, before I got out.”
Henry huffed through his nose. He was handsome for being older, carried a more dignified look, so the noise was odd coming out of him. “If it wasn’t going to kill him, I’d say leave him.”
Lillian lightly slapped at his arm. “Don’t. Now’s not the time for that.”
I raised a brow. “What’s wrong with him? Who is he?”
“He is one of us,” Lillian said. “Only there’s been a bit of a grudge for a long time between my husbands and him.”
“Long story,” Henry said. He brushed a hand over his jawline. “Probably not worth mentioning, but the Academy didn’t see eye to eye with us on our relationship choice back in the day. It was bad enough they let a girl on a guy team at the time. They only found out because he snitched before we were ready to tell them. The Academy blamed themselves for what they saw was a mess of feelings and thought some of us would get hurt.” He smirked. “Joke’s on them. We’re still together. Wasn’t just a phase after all. Could have gone easier if he’d kept it to himself.”
“But that was years ago,” Lillian said. “We’re not going to let a disagreement get in the way of saving him.” She paused. “I was just surprised. Usually for jobs like this, one volunteers. I wonder why…” She waved a hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, if they are captured, we need to be prepared to invade. Just because we’ve got Murdock doesn’t mean they’ll just hand over a bunch of witnesses. And Alice…she’s still a problem. She possibly has people out there ready to do the same thing, go in and save them from this cartel group. Not to mention that forensics group probably wants Alice, too. And we haven’t even touched on the police looking for people.”
“That’s a lot of people looking f
or each other,” Henry said. “We should go back.”
“But we might have a lead on Murdock,” I said. “And overtaking the Sargent Jasper, it’ll take a lot of people. They’re watching. They could hurt everyone inside.”
“You underestimate what we can do,” she said. “And if you’re right about them being amateurs, then it’ll be easy. And like you said, we don’t have much time.” She reached over, touching my elbow. “We can do this. They’ll all be safe. We’ll have Alice and we can take her to the FBI. It’ll be over.”
I hesitated, rubbing my forefinger and thumb together. “Murdock will still be out there. And if we had him, we could possibly get people out without anyone getting hurt.”
“But that forensics team is on to him.” She smiled, nervous but genuine with a small spark lighting up those sad eyes. “And if they’re on to him, then it’s likely you’ll catch up with them before you find Murdock, and they’ll hold you for questioning. I know it’s hard to let go sometimes, but we do our job, and we trust that others will do theirs. We can’t save the whole world, but we do what we can. And the place to start is with family. We help them first.”
Maybe that was what Axel meant. Maybe he didn’t mean to put me on the hunt for the missing Murdock. He didn’t care about that, didn’t care about the money.
Maybe that’s why he took them to an empty house. It was away from the forensics team and where they might be looking…And gave enough time for us to get away, to get help to get them out, just like he said to do. We found where they were being kept. That’s all we needed to know.
I looked to Blake. “Should we try?” I was at a loss, because it was just us. I was asking him to once again trust that this Academy team would help.
Blake looked back at us and then huffed as he turned on a road, only to back the RV up and turn us around. “Rather save our friends than try to find the missing money. What do we care where he is?”
I nodded, sitting back in the passenger seat. I just hoped we were making the right choice, that invading wouldn’t harm anyone further.
